Jimmy Page Quotes

When After Forever stopped, I didn't want to first find a band, then see if I could write with them, figure that whole thing out, then record an album. Instead, I worked with people I knew would be good songwriters out of an idea how I thought it would sound like.

I always have to have what I believe are the pillars of an album - songs which I can go back to and admire personally as a piece of writing.

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me.

It's so difficult to write good music. It's also really difficult to think about how to do it without violating the sanctity of the fourth wall.

I didn't want to make a record that was just guitar and voice, that was just the technology available to me. At the time, I remember thinking, "I am making a Faust album." That didn't translate.

I've never written one note or word of music simply because I think it will make money.

I think that the melodic piece of the puzzle in music is the most esoteric and difficult to quantify.

So is fighting incompleteness the source of artistic neurosis? I doubt it. At most, this would apply to artists who deal with particular kinds of problems. I don't think we should think of Haydn or Mozart or Dickens or George Eliot in these terms.

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

I think it's harder to make a classic now, not because of what people say, but because artists now are so concerned with what people say.

I know texture is really important, but I think texture and stuff precedes songwriting a lot of the time these days.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

I like to think about the quality, content, and concept for my music because I think these are the most important things and it just molds everything together.

I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.

When it comes to me, I just write the most beautiful music I can, I do the best work I can, and then I hand it out there.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

I do realize that the reader needs some form of resolution. Sometimes I think of it almost like writing a musical score where things have to harmonize and certain lines have to come to a close.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.

I work really hard on the shows and I think the shows speak for themselves. I don't want to construct the show to prove something.

As a musician, you write and make music as you go. It's definitely in a great sequence. When you release songs, you think, "Let me make sure this goes with this so it's like a story."

I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

With every song, all the elements have to work. First, the beat has to be great - you start there. You start with the music, and then the ideas follow. Then you start thinking of rhymes, and then you record it, and sometimes - this happens to me a lot - it doesn't come out as good as it did in my head when I first wrote it.